Silouhette
by Rothalion
Summary: After a very dark op, Rios contemplates Salem's ever-spiraling descent into depression and drink.


_SILHOUETTE_

When Rios remembered that night, his heart always plummeted and his chest ached as if a huge vice was crushing it. He never visited the memory intentionally. It just slipped into his consciousness, from time to time just as it had done that evening. Not far off, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms dangling sat Salem. He was a silhouette perched atop a flat chunk of rock that overlooked the vast equally flat expanse of the Marshall Pass. It was a stretch of brutal North African desert, but also one of the most beautiful places the big mercenary had ever visited. The early, frigid air was crystalline, and the waning morning moonlight back lit the somber man.

Rios sighed. It was time, he thought with a deep sigh, to get the younger man out of the business. He'd already spoken at length to Murray and the team about Salem's persistent and ever deepening depression. That mixed with his drinking was, had been a problem for a while. He functioned, but that was about it. He functioned, drank to forget his functioning and then crashed. Wash, rinse, repeat, he thought, grimly.

Despite Elliot's flaws, the man fascinated Rios. He sipped his luke warm beer and swatted at a flittering fly. Beer for breakfast. He looked down into the bottle's mouth and wrinkled his nose. He'd once warned the troubled mercenary that finding himself drowning in the bottom of a bottle was all too easy. That warning had, in the decade since, gone unheeded. He looked back up at his partner. Salem had stumbled up the rocky bluff around 2015 hours the night before, as soon as they'd returned from the op. He wanted to be alone, he said. So, Rios, familiar with his moods, after a wet, black op, watched him go. Now, nine hours later, he still sat there. He hadn't moved. Just sat looking out across the amber hued valley bed. The temp had dropped into the teens, and Salem wore only a light sweat shirt, boots, and his cargo pants. He had to be freezing. Rios' earpiece chirped, and he pressed the button to respond.

"Rios, go ahead, Murray."

"Tell me he came down."

"Negative. Giving him 'til full out sun up, copy?"

"Copy."

"When we get home, we fix this situation, Murray. I…I am losing him."

"Copy that. Murray, out."

He chugged down the beer's dregs and tossed the empty bottle onto the trash heap to his left, disturbing the fat flies feasting on it. The memory invaded his consciousness again, and he squeezed his eyes shut trying to halt it. Thanksgiving, 2004, his home. He'd uttered one sentence, one simple sentence out of frustration and exhaustion, and it nearly killed Salem. Unlike Elliot, he wasn't prone to nightmares, but that night and the scene that he discovered at Salem's apartment visited him all too regularly.

The moon disappeared, and the sun tipped the opposite mountain peaks. Salem had fled Tyson's home after a brief argument, at the dinner table, about his frame of mind. Rios, angry and stubborn had let him go, despite noting that he was truly out of sorts. He recalled his confusion. Salem had looked hurt and angry, but what stuck with Tyson was the look of defeat and grief that Salem exhibited. After receiving no answer to several calls to the younger man, Rios finally gave into his worry and with his father in tow drove to Elliot's beachside apartment.

As the sun crept up, the crisp shadows shifted and skittered across the sand. Rios shivered, despite the parka that he wore. Cold. The cold was part of the memory of that night. Salem's naked, limp body had been so cold. It had been cold and limp and so…Rios flexed his hands against the stiffness brought on by the cold desert air and the memory feel of Salem's chilled wet skin and sighed. Cold and limp and so small. So frighteningly small.

Tyson looked up at the seated silhouette. Unmoving, so much energy bundled up in such a small package. So much energy, yet Salem could, when needed, tamp it down and just _be._ His ability to just be in the momentwas one of his most fascinating traits. He could focus on the moment, the instant at hand not looking forward or backward and simply let the time wind down. Rios did it. But it drove him crazy. Salem, Salem just suffered the long recon ops with super human patience. Then, when the time came, he exploded, exploded with extreme and often unmitigated violence. Then he crashed and fell apart.

Small, cold and rag doll limp. Broken, Rios thought, shaking his head, broken because of one simple sentence. _Get your own family, and stop living vicariously through mine._ Salem repeated the word in a coarse whisper. _Vicariously_. Rios had begun to define it for him, despite the fact that one of Salem's obsessions was reading his dog eared dictionary. Then, he just got up and walked out into the cold November night.

A gust of wind wafted through and for a brief second a fine cloud of dust obscured Elliot. Rios smashed down the apartment door. Inside, the stereo was blasting away. He turned it off and then noticed the coffee table. Salem's gun, a .45 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, lay amongst a line of shot glasses, two upside down and four right side up and empty Stoli bottle. A lone, age smoothed quarter sat beside them. Rios recognized the coin and knew the game. It was a twisted combination of Russian Roulette and Heads or Tails. His gut sank. The glasses showed him that Salem had held the huge revolver to his head and pulled the trigger four times. Four out of six times and survived. That was when he heard the shower running.

Rios blinked when a streak of lightening shot through the turquoise and fuchsia sky. It was gone, as quickly as it had appeared. He'd crossed Salem's small living room in a flash, that night. The sound of the water was deafening. Beating down into the tub, onto Salem's prone, unconscious form, drumming what bit of life he had left out of him. He was slumped in the ecru colored tub, his knees slightly bent and his head tipped to the left. His jaw hung open, slack and wordless. Then, the smell hit him. It was a familiar, almost comforting smell. It was a work smell. The smell that meant they were doing the job, getting paid, and saving the world. He scrubbed his hands over his stubble clad face and back over his prickly head. He should shave before Salem came down, he thought. Otherwise, the smaller man would know that he'd stayed up waiting for him all night. Waiting and worrying, again. He drove his thumbs into his grit filled eye sockets, and then let his hands fall into his lap.

Blood, the coppery, sweet, pungent smell of blood. He gagged. The tub was stained crimson with it, and it was Salem's. Salem's life was swirling down the tub drain, and his sun bronzed skin was white from the loss of it. Rios snatched him up, left arm beneath his shoulders, his right beneath his knees. Turning, he raced back into the living room, set him on the floor, then after jamming his index and middle fingers against his neck and finding no pulse, he started CPR. It wasn't the first time that he'd saved the young man, but it was the most terrifying time.

His father was there then, and the neighbor. He'd ordered his father to take over the chest compressions, the neighbor to call an ambulance and then he ran to the foyer closet, tore through Salem's Go bag, dragged out his med kit and wrapped compression dressings around his torn wrists, stemming the slow runnels of blood. Finally, he inserted an IV into one of Salem's collapsing veins and started an O positive blood drip. It saddened him to think about the scars. Those were the visible scars, but Rios knew that is was Salem's inner scarring that tormented, and threatened to destroy him. His scars and my words, Rios thought. My words…

His words. That night had been a long, slow, emotionally draining experience. Salem was in and out of consciousness. Between the Stoli and the pills and the blood loss, he was in critical condition, and not stabilized until late Friday afternoon. His words. All through that long night, Rios wondered what to say to his partner, his friend when he finally woke up. He'd seen him hurt before, but this, this was, he still, after five years, didn't know what exactly it was. The words Rios had. Suicide, cry for help, PTSD, depression, desperation…he had all of those words but none seemed to fit. He didn't have words for how he'd reacted either. Shock, he was definitely in shock, but what he still struggled to grasp was the heart wrenching grief that wracked him for weeks, no months, no, he thought looking back up at the still man, face it Tyson Rios, years. Like now, his chest hurt so much. It felt heavy, and the air filling his lungs seemed to suffocate rather than fill him with life.

What would he say to him this time when they got home? Words, whatever words it took to get him on track, get him healthy. Salem awoke at 1545 hours that day. He looked like death, Rios recalled. His eyes were sunken and framed with dark circles. His skin was still pale, and he seemed to Rios to be utterly defeated. He seemed small, very, very small and wounded and alone.

He went to the bed and Salem looked left at him, blinked and then back up at the ceiling. He shook his head side to side and tears ran down his stubble shadowed cheeks. His dry, cracked lips formed words, but Rios heard nothing. Then, _finish it,_ two words, finish it. Rios broke. He broke and in that instant, he found the words, he needed. _No. I love you. You are my partner, my brother, my best friend and I need you. I'm sorry. I…love…you, Ellie. Hear me, man? I love you._ Then he'd wrapped him in his huge arms, and they'd cried together for over an hour. Salem sobbed for a life he'd lost and for the one life had forced him into, and Rios sobbed with him. He sobbed and swore to keep him safe.

But, he hadn't kept him safe. Instead, he'd waited and watched impatiently as Salem healed his battered body and mind, and then they'd thrown him back into the game, fodder for enemy fire, a warm body to make enemy bodies cold and to fill SSC's coiffeurs with cash. This time, this time Rios knew things needed to be different.

Finally, Salem stood and clambered back down the scree carpeted cliff side. Rios stood and stretched out his stiff muscles. He could tell by Elliot's gait that he was exhausted. No, he corrected himself, beyond exhaustion as close to being dead as he could get himself. The op had required an interrogation, and assassination both op tasks that they'd promised Salem he'd not have to do any longer. They'd betrayed him, once again, and he was suffering because of it. He waited for him to get to their hooch and looked him over worriedly. Salem stood and suffered the examination. He knew well enough that there was no escaping Rios' scrutiny.

Rios reached out, and Salem pulled away. It hurt, but the bigger man suffered it and stepped after him. He grasped his left elbow and tugged him into the dimly lit shack. He was shivering. The cold had finally broken through his toughness. His lips were blue and chaffed. Rios shivered. They'd been blue that horrible night in 2004 too. He pushed the memory down and focused back on Elliot.

"Let's get you cleaned up, warmed up."

"I'm good," Elliot lied.

"Not this time, Ellie, not this time. Come here."

Then, Rios wrapped him up in his arms. Ellie. He wasn't sure Ellie was the right choice. Ellie, he couldn't save. The boy, Ellie, was long dead, but Salem, Elliot, him, the man, Tyson could save and would save. He held him tight and kept talking soothingly into his right ear.

"I've got you, man. I've got you, Salem. This time you are going to ground. We are going to ground. Anywhere you want, okay. Anywhere. No more black work, no more wet work, okay. I promise. I…"

He convulsed in Tyson's grasp, and his knees buckled. Tyson went down with him and buried Salem's head against the right side of his neck. He was gasping for breath and trembling from cold and exhaustion. The op had been a bloody scene, and Rios knew that Elliot was reliving it. Regretting it. He could kill, maybe even enjoyed a good kill, but he needed to have an enemy to make it right. Even the sniping was easy for him. Identify his target, hunt them down and kill them cleanly. That he could do. It was the brutality, the torture and eventual killing that set him off, spun his moral compass, setting it whirling in doubt and regret. The brutality…Rios didn't mind it, and that had always come between them. He was a mean bastard when he needed to be, and took pleasure in that meanness once he got started. But Elliot, Elliot was just a soldier, a hunter of men, and right now that part of his soldier's heart where honor lived was once again broken.

After getting Salem cleaned up, he bundled him into a sleeping bag and settled them in his bunk with the sleeping man's head in his lap. The memory had left Rios unsettled, and he felt the need to be near him, to be able to feel the rise and fall of his chest as he slept. He'd told Murray they were going away for a bit. Elliot said he wanted to go to the Outer Hebrides, where ever the hell that was. So he told her they were going there. He'd also made her swear to find them cleaner ops, and he knew that even if she truly tried that she would still chase the big payouts. It was her motivation, her job, her salary, their salary, it was all about the money and the money would always dictate the course of their lives.

Tyson looked down at Elliot and ran his left thumb along the line of steri-strips closing the two inch long gash above his left eye. He'd taken a rifle butt to the forehead, upon entry to the building and his mask's webbing had somehow cut him. He always managed an injury or two, but lately, each time they went back out it seemed like he was getting more and more injured. He was, Rios thought, being less careful with his life. Trying, he figured, to finish off the Thanksgiving attempt.

Feeling morose, betrayed and defeated, Rios ran his thick fingers back through Salem's damp hair. He sighed and then lifted the hand and looked at them. He wiggled them, and then flexed them into and out of a fist several times, and finally brushed his knuckles very gently along Elliot's left cheek. Gently, he thought, gently and just a day before they'd perpetrated such brutality.

And such was the dichotomy of their lives hands that harm and hands that heal…As he let his head rock back against the wall to sleep, he swore to make every effort to manage that duality better. Salem was more than just a silhouette. He was flesh and blood and bone, and Rios would defend him with every fiber of his body, until the end.


End file.
